Evil Mystery

Imagine answering your cell phone one day to a male voice that gives you three minutes to confess your sin. If you don't, the madman, Slater, will blow your car to smithereens. You barely manage to exit heavy traffic and ditch the car when, precisely three minutes later, your car blows sky high. The media and police descend on the scene; your world has just changed forever.

In this third title in the Father Gabriel Mystery series, the detective priest is less than pleased to find himself the reluctant guest at a wealthy local family's Christmas party. Only the excellent - and probably black-market - food softens the horror of meeting the odious Victor Gladstone, veteran reporter, ardent anti-clerical, and the only witness to a war-time massacre no one wishes to hear about. When Victor is found dead on the Martin estate the next morning, the apparent victim of an unfortunate accident, Gabriel once again finds himself drawn into the mystery.

Forensic psychologist Sophia Channing nearly lost her life to a serial killer. Fortunately, her own quick thinking - and Division of Criminal Investigation agent Cam Prescott's efforts - rescued her from a horrifying fate. Together, Sophia and Cam jailed the sadistic predator and closed the case on his reign of terror. But when teenagers make a gruesome discovery in the Iowa woods, Sophia and Cam realize they've only scratched the surface of an evil that runs even deeper and deadlier than one madman's twisted desires.

A serial attacker is locked up, and his murderous accomplice has been gunned down. But the true mastermind behind their lethal reign of terror still hasn't been taken in or taken down, so the harrowing case of the Cornbelt Killers isn't closed - and one murderous woman is determined to keep it that way. The only thing more important to her than evading capture is hunting down her hit list of enemies, topped by Iowa's Division of Criminal Investigation agent Cam Prescott and forensic psychologist Sophia Channing.

When crime reporter Mia Hale is discovered on a Florida beach, she is bloodied and disoriented but alive. She remembers nothing, but her wounds bear the signature of a sadistic serial killer: The Collector, who has resumed his grim hobby of abducting women and taking gruesome souvenirs before dumping their bodies. None of his victims has ever escaped - and he desperately wants Mia back. FBI agent Eric MacFarlane has pursued The Collector for a long time and now Mia holds the key.

In his most personal case yet, astrologer/detective David Lowell is presented with a briefcase containing one million dollars in cash and the promise of another million upon success, by Dr. Ethan Williamson, to find his dying son’s twin for a life-saving kidney transplant. A rare blood type has made a successful donor impossible to find, and time is running out for the boy.

The origins of the outbreak were never in dispute, although at first almost no one believed the dead were actually rising. When the island nation of Haiti was struck by wave after wave of violent earthquakes killing thousands, the Z-virus lurched spectacularly to life. Early reports of cannibalism from inside the country were disregarded until shocking live video splashed across the world's television and computer screens. Suddenly everyone was a believer.

Private investigator Lizzy Gardner believed in law and order once. But after losing a loved one to a killer and watching too many vicious predators game the system and walk free, she's traded flawed justice for perfect vengeance.

It sends a shiver down Detective Superintendent Alan Markby's spine when he hears that a rambler has stumbled across human bones in Stovey Woods in the heart of the Cotswolds. Twenty-two years earlier, as a fresh-faced young inspector, he had a rare failure, in the hunt for a brutal serial rapist preying on local women. After the third rape, the attacker went to ground, never to be heard of again.

The Devil's Bible. Once considered an eighth wonder of the world, the ancient book is shrouded in mystery. No one knows who wrote it or where it was written. Even dry-boned scholars whisper about the secrets hidden in the book: how it calls to the power-hungry. How it drives people mad. How it was written in the shadows by the hand of the devil himself. But no one knows the truth - no one except Mouse.

Major Crimes Detective Samantha Reilly prefers to work alone - she’s seen as a maverick, and she still struggles privately with the death of her partner. The only person who ever sees her softer side is Michael Turcotte, a teenager she’s known since she rescued him eleven years ago from the aftermath of his parents’ murder-suicide.

New York Times best-selling author Nevada Barr continues her award-winning Anna Pigeon series with this riveting mystery that features the puzzling plot twists, deft characterizations, and sparkling dialogue that have become Barr's trademarks, and which her ever-growing fan base can't get enough of.

Lily Moore joins a group of travel journalists for an all-expenses-paid press trip to Mexico's famous resort town of Acapulco. Lily's fellow journalist Skye McDermott drops hints about an investigation she's conducting. Skye, deeply upset at a lover who jilted her, is obsessed with getting revenge by exposing his company's fraud and illegal activities. But when Skye suddenly disappears, Lily knows something is terribly wrong.

There's nothing strange about bodies buried in cemeteries - unless they don't belong there. And when six murdered women are discovered in other people's graves, the hunt for a sadistic serial killer begins before he can claim a seventh victim. Agent Cam Prescott of Iowa's Division of Criminal Investigation is leading the search alongside forensic psychologist Sophia Channing, who knows the minds of psychopaths inside and out. And after a brief but passionate affair, she knows Cam almost as well.

Minette Walters’ Acid Row was named one of Publishers Weekly’s Best Novels of 2002. With Fox Evil, she again showcases a talent that has won her critical praise and made her novels international best-sellers. Attorney Mark Ankerton comes to the aid of his client, Colonel James Lockyer-Fox, after the colonel’s wife dies under mysterious circumstances. Ankerton soon discovers that malevolent forces are at work at the Lockyer-Fox estate.

Though many of life's problems have natural causes, in the back of our minds there is one question that must be considered: Is it the devil? How do you know if your problem is the result of life choices or a demonic influence? With a ministry spanning several decades, exorcist Bob Larson has brought God's freedom to tens of thousands of demonized people worldwide. Over time, he discovered some of the common traits and key identifying marks of the presence of demons.

The city of San Siroco is sinking. The basement of Dr. Tamsin Rivers, the arrogant, selfish head of the research team assigned to find the source of the subsidence, is sinking faster. As Tamsin grows obsessed with the distorting dimensions of the room at the bottom of the stairs, she finds a door that didn’t exist before—and one night, it opens to reveal an exact physical copy of her. This doppelgänger is sweet and biddable where Tamsin is calculating and cruel. It appears fully, terribly human, passing every test Tamsin can devise.

It was supposed to be a simple case: a young man arrested for armed assault. But it was just the beginning. As Rodney Middleton awaits trial, Detective Jack Warr is warned by his mentor DCI Ridley that they have only scratched the surface of the man's crimes. Then DCI Ridley is suddenly removed from his post. No one is to contact him - and no one will say why.

Fleeing assailants through alleyways in Denver late one night, Thomas Hunter narrowly escapes to the roof of an industrial building. Then a silent bullet from the night clips his head and his world goes black. When he awakes, he finds himself in an entirely different reality, a green forest that seems more real than where he was. Every time he tries to sleep, he wakes up in the other world, and soon he truly no longer knows which reality is real.

With his hand trapped in the door of a speeding car, a man struggles to remain upright as he's dragged along a deserted stretch of San Juan Road in Phoenix's South Mountain Preserve. It's the perfect place to drive a man to his grave: literally. Starting with a crime so gruesome even prowling coyotes keep their distance from the remains, a killer begins crisscrossing the Southwest on a spree of grisly murders.